Archival 35mm print

In honor of what would have been legendary jazz musician Dexter Gordon’s 90th birthday, we’re pleased to present a special screening of ROUND MIDNIGHT, featuring Gordon’s Oscar-nominated performance. Following the screening, the Blue Note Jazz Festival will host an in-depth panel discussion, moderated by American music/jazz historian, journalist and producer Ashley Kahn. The panel will also include Dexter Gordon’s wife, Maxine Gordon, former President/CEO of Blue Note Records, Bruce Ludvall, iconic jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath and jazz record producer, writer and founder of Mosaic Records, Michael Cuscuna.

“Tavernier’s offbeat love letter to bebop gets the best jazz film award since Sven Klang’s Combo. Night after night in the pouring rain, a young Frenchman (Francois Cluzet) squats outside a Parisian jazz club, listening to the sublime saxophone of one ‘Dale Turner’. Since Turner, a shambling bear of a man, is troubled by the jazzman’s classic demons of drink and drugs, it is not long before the young man has befriended him, rescued him from cheap flophouses, and installed him in his own flat, where kindness and devotion achieve some kind of advance over the depredations of the jazz life. The film reeks of the authentic stuff of jazz, smoky with atmosphere and all as blue as a Gauloise packet. Dale Turner, as played by Dexter Gordon, seems to be an amalgam of Bud Powell and Lester Young, but the private, rueful dignity that he brings to bear is all his own.” – Time Out (London)

Drawing from ancient knowledge and cutting edge science, Symphony of the Soil is an artistic exploration of the miraculous substance soil. By understanding the elaborate relationships and mutuality between soil, water, the atmosphere, plants and animals, we come to appreciate the complex and dynamic nature of this precious resource. The film also examines our human relationship with soil, the use and misuse of soil in agriculture, deforestation and development, and the latest scientific research on soil’s key role in ameliorating the most challenging environmental issues of our time. Filmed on four continents, featuring esteemed scientists and working farmers and ranchers, Symphony of the Soil is an intriguing presentation that highlights possibilities of healthy soil creating healthy plants creating healthy humans living on a healthy planet.

Discover The New York Times’s Op-Docs, short opinion documentaries reflecting a wide range of styles and subjects, from contemporary life to historical themes. With special appearance by “Solo Piano -N. Y. C.” director Anthony Sherin, “The Long Wait” director Jason DaSilva, “True Believers in Justice” director Dawn Porter and “The War on Drugs Is a Failure” directors The Gregory Brothers.

“Lullaby” directed by Victor Kossakovsky

“The Long Wait” directed by Jason DaSilva*

“Solo Piano – N. Y. C.” directed by Anthony Sherin*

“True Believers in Justice” directed by Dawn Porter*

“Death of a Prisoner” directed by Laura Poitras

“Drones for America!” directed by Drew Christie

“The Man Who Sells the Moon” directed by Simon Ennis

“Branko: Return to Auschwitz” directed by Topaz Adizes

“The War on Drugs Is a Failure” directed by The Gregory Brothers*

*Filmmakers participating in the panel, which will be moderated by Jason Spingarn-Koff, Op-Docs series producer and curator.

A 12-week series of short documentaries from The Times’s new video initiative, playing before our regular features. Begun in November 2011, The New York Times’s Op-Docs series invites both renowned and emerging filmmakers to contribute new short opinion documentaries reflecting a wide range of styles and subject matter, including current affairs, contemporary life and historical subjects.

Films from The New York Times’s Op-Docs Through May 30 at IFC Center

Through Mar 14 SOLO PIANO – NYC, dir. Anthony Sherin

Mar 15-21 THE LONG WAIT, dir. Jason DaSilva

Mar 22-28 SODA BAN EXPLAINED, dir. Casey Neistat

Mar 29-Apr 4 ALLERGY TO ORIGINALITY, dir. Drew Christie

Apr 5-11 THE PUBLIC SQUARE, dir. Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady

Apr 12-18 FORGOTTEN IN IRAQ, dir. Beth Murphy

Apr 19-25 BRONX OBAMA, dir. Ryan Murdock

Apr 26-May 2 TRUE BELIEVERS IN JUSTICE, dir. Dawn Porter

May 3-9 LULLABY, dir. Victor Kossakovsky

May 10-16 DEATH OF A PRISONER, dir. Laura Poitras

May 17-23 MAN WHO SELLS THE MOON, dir. Simon Ennis

May 24-30 DRONES FOR AMERICA!, dir. Drew Christie

Presented by Filmmaker Magazine, with writer-director Antonio Campos, producer Sean Durkin (director of Martha Marcy May Marlene) and actor Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, Boardwalk Empire) in person for a Q&A moderated by Filmmaker writer Brandon Harris. Campos’s new film SIMON KILLER opens Fri Apr 5!

A truly impressive new voice in American indie film, Antonio Campos arrives with AFTERSCHOOL, a riveting look at the dark side of youth in the media age. An official selection of the Cannes, Berlin, SXSW and New York Film Festivals in 2008, this outstanding feature debut was also nominated for 2 Gotham awards including Best Director, and the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Robert is a young American student at an elite East Coast preparatory school. When he accidentally captures on camera the horrific death of two girls, he’s tasked with memorializing their lives in a film meant to help speed up the school’s healing process. For some, this exercise only deepens the trauma…

SOLD OUT! Post-film discussion with Michel Gondry! 35mm print

“John Schlesinger’s film certainly had an influence on my films, especially The Science of Sleep, just like Walter Mitty or other films intercutting layers of consciousness. Only BILLY LIAR is one of the few to achieve that in the context of a social satire. All Billy’s visions are like explosions coming out of this very crude and bleak reality. And his personality is very unique, nailed in his lack of ambition. This is one of the films that taught me how magic can come just from editing.” – Michel Gondry

“Released in the wake of the early social realist films of Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger’s physical world is the same – northern and working-class – but his approach to social commentary and storytelling, as adapted from Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s book and play, is more playful and less concerned with realism than films like Taste of Honey and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. Schlesinger’s Billy (Tom Courtenay) is a confused young man with too much imagination for considering kitchen sinks: nominally he’s an undertaker’s clerk, but his real job is to carve a parallel, fantasy world for himself, whether leading men to war in a state called Ambrosia or forging himself a career in showbiz. Billy’s endless lies feel less like deceptions and more like an expression of the conflicts within a young man who’s uneasy in a fast-changing world. Funny and unexpectedly poignant.” – Time Out (London)

“New French Shorts,” a seven-film sampler of new Gallic cinema presented by IFC Center and Unifrance Films, will be screened Thursday, January 17 at 8:00pm at IFC Center. The program boasts the New York premiere of shorts starring such noted French icons as Nathalie Baye and Gérard Depardieu in comedies, dramas and thrillers that have taken awards at festivals around the world, along with the winner of the 2012 Cesar for best short film. The evening includes a discussion with Slony Sow, the director of the short WINTER FROG; the lineup for the event includes:

BYE BYE (dir. Edouard Deluc, 9 min.) Critics Week, Cannes Film Festival. Nathalie Baye plays a woman whose grown daughters push her to jumpstart her lovelife.

CLICHÉ (dir. Thierry de Clermont and Vincent Lacrocq, 3 min.) In a world where celluloid is harder and harder to score, its pleasures are all the more difficult to deny.

THE DOLL (dir. Lola Doillon, 18 min.) World Premiere. In New York and Paris, a boy embarks upon parallel odysseys to recover his sister’s beloved doll.

FILLE DU CALVAIRE (dir. Stéphane Demoustie, 20 min.) Over the course of many rides, a young man recounts the evolution of a new love to a Metro acquaintance.

IT’S NOT A COWBOY MOVIE (Ce n’est pas un film de cow-boys, dir. Benjamin Parent, 12 min.) Critics Week, Cannes; Best Short, Melbourne International Film Festival. At school, adolescents discuss a troubling film they saw on TV the night before.

THE PIANO TUNER (L’Accordeur, dir. Olivier Treiner, 13 min.), Cesar Award for Best Short Film. Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet (Love Songs) is a piano tuner with a secret who finds himself trapped in a complicated situation.

WINTER FROG (Grenouille d’hiver, dir. Slony Sow, 17 min.) Cannes Film Festival. Gérard Depardieu’s grief-stricken winemaker makes an unexpected connection with a young Japanese visitor. Director Slony Sow in person.

Presented in cooperation with Unifrance Films, the showcase coincides with the launch of the third edition of its online “My French Film Festival,” presented January 17-February 17 and available on iTunes, Vudu and Eurocinema. In addition to “New French Shorts,” IFC Center partners every year with Unifrance Films as one of the venues for the popular “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” program in March.

Mon Dec 3 at 7:00pm — Click here to purchase tickets online

Special screenings of early Interpol live performances and videos, followed by a roundtable discussion about Turn On the Bright Lights featuring Interpol’s Sam Fogarino and Daniel Kessler, Ryan Schreiber (Pitchfork founder), Josh Madell (Other Music co-owner) and moderated by NYU’s Amanda Petrusich.

Special pre-release copies of “Turn on the Bright Lights: 10th Anniversary Edition” will be on sale at the event. The special double-CD/double-LP + DVD includes the remastered first album, an additional CD/LP of unreleased material and a photo booklet– and won’t be available anywhere else for another week!

7:30 show sold out ! 9:20 show with introduction by Nolan added! Click here to purchase tickets.

The acclaimed director (The Dark Knight Rises) in person to present his debut feature FOLLOWING in a new 35mm restoration.

The visionary filmmaker behind the reimagined Batman franchise and the mind-blowing Inception comes to IFC Center to screen his groundbreaking first feature, the microbudget British indie neonoir FOLLOWING, shown in a new 35mm restoration, along with the rare early short DOODLEBUG.

Before he became a sensation with the twisty revenge story Memento, Christopher Nolan fashioned this low-budget, 16 mm black-and-white neonoir with comparable precision and cunning. Providing irrefutable evidence of Nolan’s directorial bravura, Following is the fragmented tale of an unemployed young writer who trails strangers through London, hoping that they will provide inspiration for his first novel. He gets more than he bargained for when one of his unwitting subjects leads him down a dark criminal path. With gritty aesthetics and a made-on-the-fly vibe (many shots were simply stolen on the streets, unbeknownst to passersby), Following is a mind- bending psychological journey that shows the remarkable beginnings of one of today’s most acclaimed filmmakers.

From his auspicious debut, Christopher Nolan has emerged as that rare contemporary filmmaker whose work is as intensely embraced, analyzed and debated by ordinary film fans as by critics and film academics. One of the most innovative storytellers and image makers at work in movies today, Nolan has segued seamlessly from the margins of independent cinema to the top of the Hollywood A-list while revealing himself as a master sleight-of-hand illusionist and an obsessive explorer of the human psyche, with a particular affinity for the tricks of perception and memory.

- Descriptions courtesy of The Criterion Collection and The Film Society of Lincoln Center

Join this year’s N.I.C.E. for a special tribute to Italian actress Valeria Golino!

The internationally recognized actress will present a brief selection from her upcoming feature-length directorial debut VI PERDONO (I Forgive You), an adaptation of Angela del Fabbro’s novel about euthanasia, starring Golino and Riccardo Scamarcio. The story concerns a young woman who secretly helps terminally ill people to commit suicide and whose service is one day requested by a healthy person who wishes to die.

Also showing is Golino’s short film ARMANDINO AND THE MADRE (Armandino e il Madre), the story of a Romany boy who delivers messages of love from his smitten older brother to Sara, a French woman working in the Madre, Naples’ museum of contemporary art.

Following, KRYPTONITE!, a gentle coming-of-age drama, about a nerdy boy named Peppino living in Naples in the mid-’60s, who is forced to wrangle with several familial issues. His mother Rosaria (Golino) has discovered her husband is having an affair while his significantly older siblings are encountering the Age of Aquarius in their respective ways. Peppino’s nutty cousin Gennaro, who believes he is Superman, also doesn’t provide the best role model, but his individualistic outlook helps the boy find his own way. With an expertly balanced tone and vivid performances, KRYPTONITE! is a beguiling depiction of a youngster finding his inner strength amid a very chaotic household. (98 min, 2011)